Don’t chintz on East Lyme police station

The plan was not to move police from an inadequate facility into a barely adequate one.

I n their effort to give voters one thing they should rightfully expect — a project carried out within the approved budget — East Lyme officials risk not giving them a second, arguably more important thing they were promised; a police station almost as good as new but with a substantially lower price tag.

East Lyme, which only recently moved from a state police resident trooper-led model to an independent local police force, needs a new police station, on that seemingly everyone agrees. The location of the current station is a good one, on Main Street in the village of Niantic, but the building housing it, dating to 1930 and originally a storage and operations center for electric utility crews, is woefully inadequate.

For years the town has tossed around how to proceed, with recommendations for a costly new station failing to get adequate support. East Lyme First Selectman Mark Nickerson and his administration came up with what we still consider a credible alternative. Rather than build new, the town is moving forward with repurposing an existing building.

Voters in February OK’d a $5 million project to convert the former Honeywell office building at 277 West Main St. for use as a public safety building, meaning a police station. Extra space will be available for other town office needs, though that work was not included in the cost approved by voters.

A big chunk of the approved dollars, about $2.8 million, was used to buy the building and another $500,000 is necessary for the electronic communications equipment, leaving about $1.7 for the renovations necessary to utilize the facility as a police station.

All indications are it won’t be enough to get the job done, or at least to get it done right. The plan was not to move police from an inadequate facility into a barely adequate one.

In retrospect, a red flag should have been raised even before the proposal went to voters. The Board of Finance trimmed the request from $6 million to the $5 million presented at referendum. The argument then was that cutting holding cells and a sally port would mean savings, while East Lyme could continue its business arrangement to use Waterford Police Department cells.

If the project came in under estimate, and the cells could be added in, all the better, the finance board reasoned.

Nickerson perhaps should have drawn the line there, citing the expenditure as too low, but he was eager to secure the purchase while the building was available and get the project before the voters. It also seems likely that preliminary estimates on what a conversion would cost were too optimistic and not sufficiently vetted.

Because when architects Silver/ Pe truce l li+ Associates delivered their firmer estimates in October of what it would cost to turn the Honeywell structure into a police station — and put it in the best of shape — the cost came in at $5.8 million, far in excess of what the Nickerson administration had estimated.

Nickerson, at the time facing a re-election in which he ultimately prevailed, argued that the architect’s plan included some unrealistic and unnecessary upgrades and he insisted that the station could be converted within the budget. Well, yes, the $5.8 million figure was high but, no, the town is probably not getting this done for $1.7 million.

Efforts by the Public Safety Building Vision Committee to trim costs got a bit silly — only two flag poles out front instead of three; skip the coffee machine (what?) and new appliances; reduce the lockers; scrimp on landscaping.

The revised plan would utilize only the first floor of the two-story building, leaving more space than first planned for some future, undetermined use. More alarming is a request that the state not require the town to spend the $245,000 necessary to reinforce the structure to weather a hurricane or other major storm. That seems like a bad idea in a coastal community.

Now the architect is preparing the detailed construction plans to go out to bid. The specs will include the holding cells. Good move. This process should better show what the project will actually cost. The town can then have a discussion.

Our expectation is more money will be needed but the project will still cost much less than building a new station, while offering largely the same features.

Maybe a fundraiser can pay for that new coffee machine. Officers certainly need that.